Firestorm Vol.2 : 'What Went Wrong ?"

[SUPERECWFAN1]

I was looking thru some comics I had and I found some old Firestorm comics from 2004-2007 (Issues #1-#35) of the Firestorm series. It really is amazing that you could pin point when that series lost its way and became a confusing mess and lost everyone from it.

The series however started off good in fact. If anyone remembers Dan Jolley (a pretty good writer wherever he is) started the series with young Jason Rusch living in Detriot , getting his powers by accident. It was a very Kyle Rayner type origin story as this new kid adjusts to his God like powers , being forced to merge with random people , and getting along with his tough one handed , sob dad.

So what went wrong ? How did a series that started so well , end up cancelled among a mess of confusion ?



In issue #11 , DC had Ronnie Raymond actually be a part of the Firestorm matrix. Many mused this would be the perfect thing for fans of the old Firestorm. He still existed...and could exist....but he shared the powers with Rusch.

Many thought this was the perfect solution and could have Raymond assume the Stein role and mentor a young kid in using the powers. As well as working a way to get Ronnie a body again long term.


But we wrooooong big time. DC swerved people and by #13 , had Raymond go off somewhere (Heaven maybe). This left Rusch not needing to merge with anyone at all. So gone was that ...for a few issues....

DC had Stuart Moore come on and take over as writer. Many felt Moore would do a better job than what Jolley had done. So of course after a sales jolt crossover where Omac Project had crossed in....we saw a new status quo...

Rusch was now in LA , he was working at Star Labs now. A new villain was created as well in this debut arc. It was a decent arc and the crossover did help sales wise....

Then the problems set in , Moore couldn't seem to decide who Rusch would merge with. He did an arc where Rusch went into space and found Prof. Stein. Then in OYL , Stein was missing awhile and Rusch was merging with Firehawk in a confused storyline where the 2 if they were more than 100 miles away would explode !

Also add the fact we had the former Russian Firestorm show up as Photon and it was a mess .

Stein again somehow re-united with Rusch ....and no clue whatever happened to Firehawk and Photon. Maybe the 2 left some where . Either way , a series that started off very well had became a very confused mess , lost tons of readers while the writer couldn't decide who to merge Rusch with that month.


By the time Dwayne McDuffie came on , the writing was on the wall and the book was cancelled. Which is a shame ...because I think McDuffie could have fixed the series and made it readable for people to jump on.


Maybe if DC does give Firestorm another shot in a couple of years they can take the lessons from this series.

1.) Maybe its time to revisit a Rusch/Raymond team:

Yep....I think Ronnie Raymond is way more interesting as the experinced hero who did all the ex-heavy lifting as Firestorm than Stein.

This leads into #2 ...

2. Keep a status quo....

Please for the love of god....stop changing who Rusch merges with , how he does it ....and whatever the else ya do ! Its a reason why the 2nd series failed so quick after a promising launch. If you make it someone....make it someone permant ...or hell do what the original series did and have the hero merge with random damn people !

3. Better stories featuring Firestorm's rogues...

Unlike the last series where we saw few of the Firestorm rogues , the new series has gotta develope Rusch's rogues gallery for him.



In the end a Firestorm series could work. Its just that DC can't let confusion reign as the last series did.

[Metall-x]

I was a big fan of the Firestorm series from the 80's which was actually vol 2. The vol 1. series was from the late 70's. The vol 3 series had a lot of problems. First off, unlike Batman, Firestorm SHOULD BE a lighter styled hero. His tone should be closer to Superman and GL and FAR FAR removed from Winnick styled ones. The other problem is that Ronnie Raymond/Stein is firestorm. People liked Ronnie. I have no idea why you would reintroduce readers to Ronnie(in the JLA series) and then restart his series without him. It just did not make sense. Secondly, Firestorm does need a better rogue gallery, as you said. But i think vol. 3 failed in tone more then anything else.

[Doc Goblin]

I always thought Jolley created a really stong character in Jason Rusch. This kid with the wrong friends, an abusive dad and really just a whole history of victimization. You give god-like powers to someone with all the issues that come from a background like that and what you usually get is a supervillain. But not with Jason. He was trying to find a way through it all to be a superhero.

When Jolley left, it was like he took Jason's personality with him or something. The book became just a generic Firestorm title. Jason became nothing more than this utterly generic "young rookie superhero" archetype. The book just became so plot-driven. It was like it barely mattered who Firestorm was.

I don't think McDuffie really did or has done much better than Moore. Firestorm still comes off as rather personality-less, which is frustrating when there should be a pretty compelling personality in that flaming head.

[DonEMC]

There was nothing wrong with the Ronnie Raymond/Martin Stein Firestorm and that was a big reason a lot of old time Firestorm readers were put off. And, this series never took the Jason Rusch Firestorm in a direction like the creators did with Blue Beetle, which was another replacement hero that actually worked well.
Brad Meltzer was asked to kill off Firestorm in Identity Crisis so that DC could restart the character with a new alter ego.
I am a fan of the Ronnie Raymond Firestorm, which, in my mind, is the one and only Firestorm.
I didn't like the fact that Jason's dad was so abusive to him. It turned me off right from the get-go. With Spider-Man, he had his problems and all, but Aunt May wasn't a drill sergeant. She was likeable and you wanted Peter to be able to make the rent because you didn't want to see his poor, old aunt out on the street. With Jason's dad, he just wasn't a likeable character at all. I never felt sympathetic for him, despite his being created with a handicap to make us feel sympathetic for him. It was a built-in sympathy-getter that never really made me care about his dad.
And I never saw the triumph in Jason becoming Firestorm after having such a hard life. And that's the writer's fault because none of the writers actually made me care about Jason Rusch.
Then you have the problems with Firestorm's rogues gallery, which is pretty much made up of Killer Frost, Hyena, Multiplex, Plastique and Typhoon.
There was a fairly good villain introduced early on, the woman who could channel things and absorbed his powers. What was her name ... Casey Krinsky or something close to that? I thought she would be a great villain for Firestorm, but she was never seen again.
I didn't think they needed to mess with Firestorm's costume, either. He had a great costume (voted by Andy Mangels in a 1980s issue of Amazing Heroes as one of the best costumes in comics -- and I'd have to agree).
This series was, as has been said on this thread before, a total mess. It started out with the tiniest bit of promise and i had hoped it would get better. I stuck around for 23 issues and then dropped the book. Each month I came back hoping it would get better, but I was sorely disappointed each issue.

[DonEMC]

I'd also bet that there were a few readers who believed DC killed Ronnie Raymond just to insert a minority character in his place. I know I heard longtime Ronnie fans at my local shop complaining about his sudden death in IC and how it just seemed to be a quick way to get him out of the way to put a minority character in the suit.
Then, later on in the series ... we were teased with a Ronnie/Jason Firestorm, which would have been great, but it seemed like DC really wanted Ronnie out of the way to try to force people to accept Jason when the stories just weren't causing readers to warm to him.
And, again, I say that's the writers' fault.
Jason could be a great character if he's given the right creative team and they can come up with some good characterization for him. Give him some personality and a good supporting cast. Give him someone to merge with that will make things interesting.
Despite being a Ronnie fan, I gave Vol. 3 adequate time to get better. Even a little improvement would have kept me around. But, the Stuart Moore issues really didn't do a whole lot to endear me to the character.
I liked the original six or seven issues of Vol. 3 well enough and really had high hopes that this book would continue to get better (I even bought a page of ChrissCross's art because I liked the way he drew Firestorm). But, I never thought any of the writers knew what to do with him.
At the same time, I was also reading Blue Beetle and I thought Jaime Reyes' character was brilliant and the new Blue Beetle was a fascinating concept.
The creators on Firestorm, however, never could decide on a direction, it seemed, and the stories became a tangled mess that left me cold and caused me to drop the book after nearly two years of waiting and hoping.

[Ryan Day]

There's no reason why Firestorm has to be Ronnie & Stein. John Ostrander kept the book alive for several years by changing the status quo, and that's the most interesting the character's ever been.

And I honestly don't understand the attachment to Ronnie at all. He's one of the least interesting alter egos around - the whininess of Peter Parker without any of the cleverness.

Ultimately, Firestorm has never been very popular, so it may be unrealistic to expect it to succeed in any form. If DC wanted to put a high-profile creative team on it, an audience might appear, but there just aren't enough people who are going to buy a book just because it's about Firestorm.

[Carter Hall]

I've always liked the character of Firestorm and really enjoy picking up cheap back issues of volumes 1 and 2 in bargain bins of comic book stores. It always had a wonderful "pre-Crisis DCU feel" and seemed pretty fun.

I read a few copies of the newest Firestorm run and I thought the Infinite Crisis crossovers were great, but that was it. I hated the first few issues because I found them to be very much part of the awful late-90s/early 2000s trend of trying to be too "real." By this I mean the book was almost exclusively about Jason hanging out in his apartment, trying to hold down a job in a poor town, dealing with social problems his friends are in, and just a lot of bad teen angst! There really wasn't much about him being a superhero, at least not enough for my taste. Characters like Peter Parker, Tony Stark, and Hal Jordan (per se) are wonderful because half their book is about their lives as civilians, but at least half of any issue of their book is about their alter-ego, about their adventures as a hero. The most successful hero books are those that make us care about both. With Firestorm, I didn't care much about his Winnick-style angst and life problems.

I would've loved the book to explore the Firestorm Matrix and how it works. How is it that Prof. Stein still exists in the Matrix? How do individuals become a part of it? Anyway, just some thoughts...